Research, practice and projects

Achintya’s PhD thesis is focused on the CMS Experiment
at CERN, a
scientific collaboration of over 3,000 physicists, engineers and
computer scientists from 182 institutes and laboratories in 42
countries. It will involve a survey of CMS members accompanied by
interviews of a subset of the collaboration. It will cover
scientists’ definitions of “outreach”, incentives they receive to
be involved in outreach, whether they have been influenced by
funding agencies’ calls for more outreach, what barriers they face
(internal and external) in participating in dissemination
efforts.

A key matter left unanswered by previous studies of
CERN
concerns the public's expectations from outreach activities. This
question will be addressed by conducting surveys of some of the
thousands of people who will visit the CMS Experiment in the next few
years.

The outcome of this research can potentially guide the outreach
policies of CMS
and CERN by
recognising the support that needs to be provided for sustained
engagement; identifying any barriers, both perceived and real, that
prevent scientists from participating in dissemination activities;
and comparing the expectations of the intended audiences with
current outreach efforts.